This Is Crazy Eddie, And I Approve This Ad

Has The Nassau County GOP Gone Insane?

Remember those Crazy Eddie commercials, where the bug-eyed guy would flail his hands and yell in your face, “Go to Crazy Eddie. His prices are IN-SANNNNE?”

Well, that guy from those comical TV ads of the 70s (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) is baa-ak – in all of his psychotic glory – in a new TV spot aimed at Tom Suozzi, as paid for by our friends at the Nassau County GOP.

In this spot, the Crazy Eddie reincarnate – wild-eyed and enraged (probably an ex-Commissioner from one of the Town of Hempstead Sanitary Districts), stares into the camera, crazed look and all, and indignantly tells viewers that Tom Suozzi and the Democrats raised taxes by 42%.

Now we don’t know if the guy in the ad actually lives in Nassau County, or just plays a County resident on TV, but where does the GOP get their numbers? There was one tax increase in the first year of the Suozzi administration of 19%, this to help make up for a $428 million deficit – a deficit courtesy of the very same folks who now complain about the Suozzi tax increase. [Were it left in the hands of the GOP County Legislators, the Suozzi tax increase would have been voted down, and, as they fiddled haplessly in Mineola, the County would have merrily rolled along right into bankruptcy.]

Does the GOP simply make up their facts and figures as they go along? Apparently so. Or maybe they just added in the increases in Town and Special District (again, the Town) taxes imposed at a time when the Town of Hempstead claimed it had, not a deficit, but a $50 million plus surplus, figuring nobody would notice. Who raises taxes – which is exactly what the Town of Hempstead did by some 12.8% in 2005 – when there is a surplus? Only in Hempstead Town!

Or it could be the GOP calculates into the tax necessary increases in fees, or other assessments beyond the control of either County Executive or Legislature, much as the Town Supervisor, Kate Murray, negates taxes imposed by the Town’s Special Districts when she pledges no tax increase in 2006 – for taxes under her control (read as, the Town’s General Purpose tax).

Okay, so we are expected to believe – factual evidence notwithstanding – that Suozzi has raised taxes by some 42%. By the same token, we are also asked to believe that the Town of Hempstead spends only 12 cents per letter mailed, when the postmark itself clearly reads 16.2 cents.

Can we believe anything the GOP tells us? Why not? We did so for lo those many years when fiscal doom and managerial collapse was all but kept from public view through the magic of smoke and mirrors.

Its fine to chide the Suozzi administration for hiring folks from outside the County, rather than to give deference to the able and willing within the County. We concur, and have so stated our displeasure, as has been duly noted by Team Suozzi.

To advance the incredulous – let alone the completely untrue – (and to do so in July, when hardly anyone is watching) signals not only the desperation of the GOP, but moreover, their willingness to say and do whatever it may take to stay in power, or to regain control lost due to the blindness of ambition and the suspension of reality that often accompanies unbridled arrogance.

So, watch for that Crazy Eddie spot on cable (never on satellite), and whatever you do, “Vote for the Republicans. Their facts and figures are IN-SANNNNE!"